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IE program manager endorses HTML 5 multimedia tags

A program manager on the Internet Explorer team has joined the HTML 5 revision …

On Wednesday, Google's Mark Pilgrim published episode 35 of This Week in HTML 5, a series of articles that he is writing at the WHATWG blog to document the progress of the Web standards effort. In this episode, he praises Microsoft's Adrian Bateman, who is providing useful feedback on the HTML 5 draft on behalf of Microsoft. Pilgrim's article highlights some of Bateman's commentary on specific features of HTML 5, including statements which indicate that Microsoft is supportive of the HTML 5 multimedia tags.

HTML 5 is the next generation of the hypertext markup language standard that is used to produce content on the Web. It originally emerged from the Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group (WHATWG) and is presently undergoing editing through the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). The HTML 5 specification describes a number of important emerging Web features, including the Canvas and Video elements. Some aspects of HTML 5 are already widely implemented in modern browsers.

Microsoft originally declined an invitation to join WHATWG early in the process of defining HTML 5. Microsoft's involvement has been minimal and the company has largely declined to comment on its intentions with regard to implementation. Despite this, Microsoft has adopted a handful of HTML 5 features, such as DOM Storage, and the specification itself has adopted several features that Microsoft introduced in Internet Explorer, such as the contentEditable attribute.

Bateman, a program manager in Microsoft's Internet Explorer group, became an active participant in the HTML 5 revision process last month. He posted messages to the official W3C mailing list to articulate Microsoft's views on key components of HTML 5.

"As part of our planning for future work, the IE team is reviewing the current editor's draft of the HTML5 spec and gathering our thoughts. We want to share our feedback and discuss this in the working group," Bateman wrote. "At this stage we have more questions than answers but I believe that discussing them in public is the best way to make progress."

According to Pilgrim, this is unprecedented.

"On August 7, 2009, Adrian Bateman did what no man or woman had ever done before: he gave substantive feedback on the current editor's draft of HTML5 on behalf of Microsoft. His feedback was detailed and well-reasoned, and it spawned much discussion," Pilgrim wrote. "As you might expect, much of the discussion [on the HTML 5 draft] since August 7 has been driven by Microsoft's feedback. After five years of virtual silence, nobody wants to miss the opportunity to engage with a representative of the world's still-dominant browser."

Internet Explorer is the only major browser that doesn't have support for the HTML 5 video element, a tag that allows the browser to natively play video content without having to rely on plugins. Microsoft's position on the video element has been highly ambiguous. In a message posted to the W3C mailing list this month, Bateman revealed that Microsoft is in favor of the feature.

"We support the inclusion of the <video> and <audio> elements in the spec," Bateman wrote.

It still remains unclear when or if Microsoft will actually implement the video and audio elements, but this endorsement by a program manager in the Internet Explorer team on behalf of Microsoft is a very significant and meaningful gesture. He says that there are still aspects that need to be discussed further, but Microsoft is generally supportive. Specifically, he wants to explore the possibility of adding additional optional metadata attributes to the media source elements and he also wants the committee to explore the possibility of adding a media stream event notification mechanism that would simplify things like synchronization with text transcripts.

Microsoft's increased involvement in the HTML 5 draft process reflects the growing importance of the emerging standard. The mainstream browser vendors appear to unanimously agree that it's time for the Web to move forward and deliver a richer platform for users and developers. If Microsoft gets fully behind the HTML 5 video and audio elements, it would be a major step towards opening multimedia on the Web and undermining the dominance in this field of proprietary browser plugins.